


What Family Is

by jackstanifold



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Foster Care, Found Family, Good Jschlatt (Video Blogging RPF), Homelessness, Karl Jacobs is trans in this, Quackity and George are brothers, Sympathetic Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, all i know is wake up write found family cry repeat, all of them are sympathetic here bitch, because I say so, god i care them, i am not a dsmp!dream apologist at all i just want more dream fluff, i have been working on this for months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29537961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackstanifold/pseuds/jackstanifold
Summary: Dream was homeless for as long as he could remember, his only family long gone. He decides he doesn't care. Family is overrated.Or: they're all a bunch of dumbass kids with too much love to give, and Dream doesn't even realize he's making friends until they've well passed that point and are way too deep into the family territory for him to get out.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Alexis | Quackity & Sam | Awesamdude, Cara | CaptainPuffy & Jschlatt & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Clay | Dream & Everyone, Clay | Dream & Jschlatt & Technoblade, It's all platonic DW, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 37
Kudos: 241





	What Family Is

**Author's Note:**

> this one goes out to all the people who are waiting for me to update wtts so they can get their mumza content! *strums guitar* 
> 
> also, this is entirely fluff because i'm sad and i just realized i need to stop sibling-adopting kids named tommy who use disc/discs pronouns because this is the third one, what the fuck.

Dream didn’t have a family. He never had. He couldn’t remember ever having one, at least, although he supposed there had to be someone out there, someone who shared DNA with him. Maybe not. Maybe he really was alone. It sure felt like it sometimes.

He didn’t have a home, either. He used to, and a pair of adults who treated him like glass, and tried to get him to call them mom and dad, even though they weren’t. He ran away, though, their coddling getting on his nerves. He didn’t remember their names. He just knew they weren’t his family.

He was 10 the first time he met the boy. He was sitting at a park bench, his knees pulled up to his chest, watching the families walk past. There was a boy staring at him. Short, skinny, a pair of frameless glasses and a mop of caramel hair. Dream stared back, his eyes narrowing a bit in a challenge. The boy was at least a hundred feet away, and Dream couldn’t see his expression very well, but he imagined he squinted back.

Then, a man with blond hair and a funny hat called the boy away, and he left. Dream was a bit sad, though he wasn’t sure why. He sighed, turning back to the playground.

The next day, the boy was back. He walked up to Dream, standing over him and staring at him more openly. He was around Dream’s age, maybe a bit younger, with a face covered in freckles, and a book tucked under his arm. He wore a very baggy white t-shirt and cargo parts several sizes too big. His eyes narrowed a bit when Dream tried to read the spine of the book, so he backed off.

He was kinda scary. Dream wondered if he was going to beat him up.

Finally, the boy grunted, and plopped down beside him, opening the book and started reading silently. The boys sat quietly, before Dream reached over and grabbed the book. The small boy tensed, glaring at him. 

“The Oh-die-sea? What’s that about?”

“The Odyssey. It’s about monsters and stuff.”

“Cool,” He handed the book back, noticing the hesitation from the other boy, who stared from him to the book and back. “Is it good?”

The boy shrugged. “I guess,” His voice was flat, and kinda nasally. Dream thought it sounded kinda nice. They sat in silence for a bit longer, before the boy suddenly blurted out, “My name is Techno.”

Dream smiled at him. “Cool. I’m Dream.” 

They shook hands, like he’d seen in the movies, and then went back to silence, although it was much less tense, less awkward.

Techno invited Dream to dinner, and seeing as how he hadn’t eaten in two days, he agreed.

Techno’s family was incredible. His dad, Phil, was very tired from a long day at work, but he let Dream try on his hat and laughed, saying green suited him. Techno’s twin brother, Wilbur, showed him his guitar, and his light up wall clock, and his haunted closet. Tommy, their 4 year old brother, blinked up at him in a borderline threatening way. Dinner was a disaster, and Wilbur ended up getting sent to his room for calling Tommy a “little bitch.” Dream had never laughed so hard in his life.

Techno asked his dad if Dream could stay the night. Phil had shrugged his shoulders, saying that he was fine with it if Dream’s parents were fine with it. Dream didn’t miss the look on his face when he said he didn’t have any parents.

He ended up staying a lot longer than a night.

One day, Wilbur’s friend Schlatt came over. His name wasn’t really Schlatt, he explained. That was his last name. His first name was a secret no one knew. Dream asked if his parents knew, and he paused before adding that family doesn’t count, anyway. And neither do Charlie, or Ted, or any of those guys, they’re losers and don’t count for anything. Dream didn’t know any of those people, so he just shrugged.

Schlatt was funny. He was loud, yeah, but he was funny. He and Phil got in a mock argument over whether or not plastic wrappers were edible or not, and Phil had never looked so relaxed. That was good, Dream decided, Phil deserved to relax. 

That night, Schlatt told Dream he was going to kidnap him, because Wilbur didn’t want to do a sleepover, and Schlatt didn’t need more friends or anything, because he was really popular, but Dream looked like the only person he talked to was Techno, and that’s lame, and he felt bad for him.

Dream told him to shut up, but he followed him out into the night, after telling Phil where he was going.

Schlatt’s parents were out on a business trip, he learned, and he was not supposed to go out that night.

“What if you’d been hit by a bus?! Or kidnapped?!” His 16 year old sister sounded half-joking at least, her rainbow dyed hair bouncing around her shoulders as she rambled. Dream thought the colors looked pretty, and completely blocked out everything else she said as he stared at her hair. Eventually, she noticed and snapped her fingers in his face. 

Her name was Puffy, and she was even funnier than Schlatt was. They had another sibling, a kid named Tubbo, who was apparently 1) best friends with Tommy Watson, 2) fast asleep upstairs. 

He ended up sleeping on the couch, covered in a mound of blankets, in case he got cold. He didn’t feel like pointing out that it was summer to Schlatt, who was still trying very very hard to look cool in front of his new friend, while simultaneously doting on him. Schlatt was nice, he decided, even if he didn’t want anyone to know.

Tubbo walked into breakfast, rubbing his eyes, and as soon as he saw Dream, turned around and went back to bed.

Dream stayed there for a while, until he got bored of sleeping on the couch, and decided to find somewhere new.

  
This time, though, instead of having to sit in the park for two weeks as he waited for someone to notice him, he sat at Techno’s dining room table, and sipped hot chocolate and watched Phil and Puffy talk.

They decided to call someone named Sam, and Dream waited very patiently until he arrived.

Sam was terrifying, in a way no one else was. He was tall, towering over Phil, and he had short neon green hair, and a sleeveless workout shirt and basketball shorts, and his voice was so deep it was more of a hum than anything.

Dream loved him.

Apparently, Phil wanted to put him in “the system”, but judging how Puffy flinched, that wasn’t a good option. Sam offered to let him stay at his place, just for the night, and, grudgingly, Phil agreed.

It was late by the time Sam’s dusty old pickup shuddered to a stop in front of his house, and Dream was already asleep in the back.

He woke up in the spare bedroom to a boy sitting on his legs.

“Hi?”

“Hello,” The boy said, plainly, his eyes narrowing behind white-rimmed sunglasses. “Who are you?”

“Dream.”

The boy wrinkled his nose. “What kinda name is that?”

“Mine,” Dream sat up, looking at him more carefully. “What’s your name?”

“George.”

They didn’t get along. No, that’s not true, they got along wonderfully, but in that odd way where they would never admit to getting along. Sam would watch them argue over french toast and orange juice and chairs with a small, knowing grin on his face.

George’s little brother Quackity, on the other hand, was not so amused by their bickering. “Oh my GOD, make it stop! I’m going to Sapnap’s, don’t follow me.”

George and Dream looked at each other, and they understood in that moment that they were going to work together once, just once, and together they grabbed their shoes, grabbed their jackets, and followed Quackity.

His friend Sapnap was Dream’s new favorite person. He was only 8, but he was so much cooler than anyone else Dream knew, and he thought his silly little dance moves were funny, and he laughed at George with him, and he found out he could pick Dream up, just a little bit.

At one point, Bad and Skeppy, Sapnap’s dads, called them down for dinner, and all four of them came flooding down, all talking together.

Bad had laughed, called them a menagerie, and asked Dream if he wanted to stay the night.

He did.

That night, as Sapnap, George, Quackity and Dream laid on the floor of Sapnap’s bedroom, he told them about his parents, and his not-parents, and instead of the shocked silence that came when he told adults, he got sympathy, and understanding, in a way he’d never gotten.

“My parents died too,” Quackity said. “Sam got me from an orphanage.”

George nodded. “Yeah. I remember that.”

Sapnap hummed. “I don’t know what I’d do if my dads died.”

The subject moved on, to Mario Kart and pizza toppings, naturally, and Dream smiled. He wasn’t used to people not freaking out, but he wasn’t complaining. He felt comfortable here, in a way he never had before.

That night was the best of his life.

It was also the first time he’d ever cuddled anyone. He woke up around midnight to Sapnap laying on his stomach and George tucked under his arm, while Quackity hugged Sapnap’s waist, burying his face in the taller boy’s shoulder. He fell back asleep with a warmth in his heart, and a smile on his face.

He continued living with George and Sam, for a while, switching sometimes, staying the night at Techno’s, or Schlatt’s, or Sapnap’s.

School started a month or so later, and Sam signed him up for a placement test.

“He’s very smart,” The woman smiled proudly at the engineer, who smiled proudly at the boy, who smiled proudly at her. “Especially statistics, he’s very good at those.”

He was in Techno’s English class, and Wilbur’s math class, and he had science with George. It was a good schedule, all things considered.

One day, when he was at George’s house, watching Finding Nemo on his laptop and helping him fold his clothes, Sapnap and Quackity burst in, hauling a boy behind them.   
  


His name was Karl, and he was part of the gang immediately. It was odd how quickly he blended in. He didn’t have parents, either, but he had a “parent”, a lanky man named Cat, who had apparently taken him in that weekend.

Karl fit under Dream’s left arm, his legs tangled with Quackity’s, his shoulder cradling Sapnap’s head, and his pinky finger looped with George’s.

Techno and Schlatt fit too, in an odd way where, if Dream wasn’t there, they never would’ve joined, never would’ve matched, but they did, and somehow, that made the others fit all the more.

They grew together.

He watched George try on colorblind glasses for the first time, smiling at his expression when he saw the green of his best friend’s eyes for the first time.

Sapnap taught him to skateboard, letting him use his, and joked that he was going to replace Tony Hawk.

He would let Quackity steal his hoodie, running around and announcing himself as Mexican Dream.

When Karl’s dad adopted another kid, Robin, Dream sat up with him and hugged him, reminding him he wasn’t getting replaced, he was just getting a sibling.

He helped Techno with his math, and Techno helped him with his English, and together, they failed Science.

He and Schlatt went to Taco Bell one weekend, and he watched the other boy down four quesadillas and two Pepsis before he finished his taco.

He learned about the little things: how George’s favorite color was blue, how Sapnap played violin, how Quackity wore a retainer, how Karl had a monster energy drink addiction, how Techno was a hardcore vegetarian, how Schlatt knew how to shoplift.

He knew more about them than he did himself, he realised.

Truth always came at night, laying on the floor of one of their rooms, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t know my own name.” He finally admitted.

George snorted. “It’s Dream, dumbass.”

“No, I mean,” He hesitated. “My real name. My birth name.”

It was quiet for a bit, before Karl spoke. “Does it matter?”

He didn’t look at him. “I think it should. Shouldn’t it?”

“You and my dad call me Karl. Teachers call me Mr Jacobs. The social worker calls me Caroline. My friend Charles calls me Isaac. Robin calls me Kay. You don’t need to know your birth name, it doesn’t matter.”

Dream hummed. “Are you sure?”

Sapnap shifted, eyes meeting Dream’s. “Hey, dude. If it bugs you, we can come up with a new name.”

Dream hesitated. “Alright.”

Cornelius Clay Crampton. Dream laughed as they laid each letter in place, each sound fitting into a disaster of a name that didn’t fit him, and suddenly, he didn’t care.

Karl was right. The idea of a birth name was dumb.

He was Dream.

That was it.

One day, he helped Techno dye his hair, and, sitting cross legged on the bathroom counter, watching the dye run down the drain, he asked a question.

“Do you regret meeting me?”

“No.”

“I talk too much.”

“Yeah.”

“Am I annoying?”

“Yeah.”

“So you do regret it?”

Techno stood up straight, wrapping a towel around his hair, eyes not meeting Dream’s. “No.”

That was enough for Dream.

He asked the same of Schlatt, later on, and got a very different response.

“Fuck yeah. One of the worst mistakes in my life was going over to Wil’s house that day. Every night I lay in bed, staring at my ceiling and cry, thinking about how much I hate you. Pass the wiimote?”

Dream laughed and shrugged. “If you hate me so much, would you rather I leave?”

“Yeah, of course. But, uh… if you could grab me a soda on the way out?”

Dream didn’t leave. Schlatt didn’t get his soda, either. Puffy came down to the basement the next morning to find them fast asleep, a baby doll hanging from a wiimote remote strap and ‘SEX’ written on the dry erase board in permanent marker.

It was cold on the first day of high school. They all met up out front, Karl and George and Dream and Techno and Schlatt. Sapnap and Quackity were there too, even though they were still in middle school. They stood in silence for a moment, and then the bell rang, and their new lives began.

Dream heard of people falling apart in high school. He’d heard of people never speaking to each other after middle school, and somehow, he expected that to happen to them.

He wasn’t sure why he was so worried.

George joined the soccer team, but he still met up with them every day after practice to hang out.

Sapnap and Quackity stayed in middle school, hanging out with stoners and delinquents, but they always had time for the older kids, and the older kids always had time for them.

Karl made new friends, “the Beast crew”, and the leader, Jimmy, gave Dream a hundred dollars for his birthday. 

Techno ran himself ragged with agriculture club and fencing and AP English and getting diagnosed for auditory hallucinations, and Dream stayed up with him and helped him focus.

Schlatt got voted for class president and had meetings to go to, but he skipped to take Karl out for his birthday.

On the last day of freshman year, they all gathered in Sapnap’s room, where it all started, and they sat on the floor and ate pizza, and Dream slung an arm around George’s shoulders, and his legs were tangled with Quackity’s, and Techno didn’t like to be touched, but his hand rested on Dream’s, his fingers tapping out a gentle rhythm. 

They talked, about nothing and everything, and romance and hate, and teachers and students, and Quackity smelled like weed and Schlatt smelled like cologne and George smelled like shampoo and Sapnap smelled like woodsmoke and Techno smelled like sweat and Karl smelled like stale Monster, and Dream got pizza sauce on his hoodie and Sapnap dumped orange Fanta on him.

Dream didn’t have a biological family. He never had. He couldn’t remember ever having one, at least, although he supposed there had to be someone out there, someone who shared DNA with him. Maybe not. Maybe he really was alone. It didn’t really feel like it anymore, though.

This was close enough to a family he decided, as he watched Karl plant a gross kiss on Sapnap’s cheek and laughed as the ravenette started to screech. 

**Author's Note:**

> anyone wanna uhhhhhhhhh be my friend? i'm @jackstanifold on tumblr and bacchus#3993 on discord.


End file.
